Future Taranaki builds on strengths

Future Taranaki builds on strengths

Monday 5 March

Public consultation is starting on two exciting, new projects embracing Taranaki’s tourism and environmental opportunities, proposed by Taranaki Regional Council and underpinned by business as planned.

The projects are part of Taranak’s 10-year plan, released by the TRC, which will open for public submission on Monday 5 March 2018. View the consultation documenthere

TRC Chair David MacLeod says Taranaki’s 2018/2028 Long Term Plan strikes a good balance between prudent management of resources, while confidently embracing bold new ambitions.

“We’ve taken a business as usual approach across our work, but we’re lifting our long-running and successful programmes, while also playing a lead role in New Zealand achieving biodiversity and predator-free aspirations and further developing Taranaki as a world-class visitor destination,” Mr MacLeod says.

A $5.9million investment over ten years to the Council’s world-class rainforest garden Pukeiti would take the popular visitor destination to the next level. It would complete the carpark extension, landscaping and adding new children’s activities, as part of TRC’s work improving lifestyles. It would also develop walking and biking tracks, a family tramping hut and a lookout, linking Pukeiti to the Kaitake Trail segment of the larger Taranaki Crossing project. This Kaitake Trail would be implemented as a joint project between the TRC and the New Plymouth District Council, requiring the agreement of both authorities. The trail would be a high quality walkway and cycle track, from Pukeiti down a NPDC paper road, to the coast at Oakura. It would form an integral part of The Taranaki Crossing, a mountain to surf attraction identified in Tapuae Roa – the regional development strategy for Taranaki.

Another ambitious project would rejuvenate Taranaki; enhancing native habitats, ecosystems and wildlife, with a united region-wide approach.

It would cost $580,000 pa over three years and combine several different predator and biodiversity programmes, suppressing and reducing possums and pests, allowing native habitats and indigenous flora and fauna to thrive and residents to reconnect.

The large-scale work project would suppress predators like possums, mustelids, feral cats and rats, in New Plymouth’s Waiwhakaiho catchment and across more than 70,000 hectares of private and public land, in and around Mt Taranaki.

Critical to this, is the continued focus on the Council’s flagship Riparian Management, Key Native Ecosystem and Possum Self-help Programmes, which are enjoying so much success.

The predator work would combine resources and funding from the Council, the biodiversity trust Wild for Taranaki and central Government’s Predator-Free New Zealand 2050 programme. It would also rely on the continued efforts and good will of Taranaki landowners, who continue to care for their environment with a strong sense of environmental stewardship, Mr MacLeod says.

“Financially, the impact of our LTP proposals are relatively minor. The Council proposes an increase of 3.5 percent in its general rates take for 2018/2019. In the last three years, the average general rates increase has been 0.97%,” he says.